Socrates' Toxic Ties: Stoic Lessons For Relationships

What was Socrates’ relationship with his infamous wife, Xanthippe, really like? Was she an abusive partner, or simply misunderstood within the context of ancient Athenian culture?

In this fascinating discussion, I dive deep into Socrates’ domestic life with philosopher and author Donald Robertson.

Transcript

The following is a clip from a conversation I recorded with Donald Robertson,

A cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and renowned expert on Stoicism.

Donald specializes in bridging ancient philosophical wisdom with the modern psychology to enhance resilience,

Emotional clarity,

And well-being.

Enjoy.

Socrates' wife,

Xanthippe.

I think I'm pronouncing her name right.

So,

When she's described,

She's framed as almost just like this very hot-tempered prude,

Is that what you'd call her?

And kind of Socrates- Prude-ish.

Prude-ish,

And Socrates is kind of a bit distant from her and kind of more focused on philosophy.

But when I was thinking about the relationship,

I was thinking that it sounds almost like an abusive relationship.

It sounds almost like the way she's acting,

It sounds like she is verbally and physically abusing Socrates and she may have some kind of personality disorder,

Right?

She's not quite stable,

Just from the description.

Possible.

I think,

Yeah,

I can see that,

Right?

But I think there's alternative ways of interpreting it,

Right?

So it's possible,

Right?

With something like that,

I guess,

You know,

Writing biography and telling a story in ancient history,

I think there's multiple possible interpretations.

There's one that's maybe more sort of favorable to her,

Or to Socrates,

And then there's ones that,

You know,

Are maybe a little bit more cynical or maybe more concerned about what we're reading.

And then we also need to cut some slack or make some allowances for cultural differences,

Right?

So in the ancient Mediterranean world,

I think it's fair to say that people expressed emotion differently.

And,

You know,

People typically expressed emotion in much more physical form.

So some of the behavior in general seems a little bit shocking to us.

So we will often hear even about adult Mediterranean men tearing their hair out,

Beating their chests,

Beating their face with their fists in grief over something or rage.

Um,

So,

You know,

We don't in modern day America,

Britain or Canada,

Kind of express our emotions in that way that people in other cultures do,

Right?

So there's more of kind of physical expressiveness.

So it's not with that in mind.

We're told things like she tore the shirt off his back.

She threw a bucket of water over.

She trampled a cake that he'd been given as a gift,

Which sounds kind of extreme from our point of view.

I don't think it would actually have seemed as extreme in classical Athenian culture.

I could be wrong about that.

But the impression I get is that that kind of really expressive,

Physical,

Emotional behavior was not as unusual in those times as it would be today.

So can we view it as a personality disorder or some kind of mental health problem?

It's very difficult to make a judgment about that,

In my view,

When we're dealing with cultural differences in emotion.

Like if that's within the normal bounds of emotional expression,

It might seem really weird to us or kind of extreme to us.

I mean,

The question would be if someone's emotional reactions are much more extreme than other members of their culture,

Then we're more likely to think in terms of a mental health diagnosis.

But what if that's within the normal bounds of how people in general express their emotion in that culture?

Then I think it's harder to label it as a mental health problem.

It's tricky.

It's a notoriously difficult question.

Cross-cultural psychopathology,

Basically.

And especially when we're talking about different eras in history.

So I keep an open mind about it.

I can kind of see it either way.

Maybe Socrates' wife was crazy.

Or maybe she had mental health problems.

Or maybe she was a really horrible person.

Or I can imagine also just coming across differently in that culture.

It might be that people looking at her just thought,

This is how a lot of people react in classical Athens,

In these situations.

But it would seem weird to us.

Now,

In terms of his relationship with us,

We don't have a lot of evidence.

By the way,

She's believed to have been about 30 years younger than him.

So it sounds like she was quite a lot younger,

Which actually also wouldn't have been that unusual in ancient Greece and also in Roman society as well.

Today we might think that's quite a big age gap,

But it wouldn't seem so out of place then.

Especially also,

By the way,

After many adult men had been killed in the Peloponnesian War.

So there wouldn't be as many.

There would be a lot of unmarried women and not as many men around.

There's also a story that Socrates had two wives.

Again,

Some scholars believe that's plausible and it could be a consequence of the Peloponnesian War,

That maybe it became the norm for men to take a second wife.

So somebody would have to,

In their culture,

Take responsibility perhaps for women that had been widowed or that husbands weren't available for.

So there's some cultural differences and complexities there.

In one of Xenophon's dialogues,

Socrates says that he emphasizes that Xanthippe is a good wife and a good mother and that he really values her,

Despite the fact that she has this hot temper.

So it's hard because we don't know her,

Right?

But at least in that little snippet,

He comes across as seeming quite confident that she's somebody that he values as a wife and a mother to his children.

I was about to say that it's something that he loves,

But you know,

Actually in classical Athens in that time,

It's not that common for men to express love towards their wives.

Most of the love poetry that we have,

Brace yourselves,

Gentle readers,

From classical Athens,

Most but not all of the love poetry is written between men rather than written by men to women.

Bisexuality of a sort was fairly normal.

Sexual mores were very different from our society.

So Socrates quite possibly had a male lover of sorts and maybe two wives.

So there's a bit of a different family set up.

So much for the nuclear family and all that,

Right?

It wasn't necessarily as simple as that in ancient Athens.

But yeah,

She can come across as a bad mother,

But actually in that dialogue with Lamprocles,

They are Socrates really seems to be making the case that despite her bad temper,

She's still,

She's actually a fundamentally good and caring person.

So we maybe he's kind of making out that we shouldn't be too quick to judge somebody by just the superficial behavior.

So somebody might have quite a sharp tongue,

But still you can imagine somebody who could be,

You know,

Could raise a voice,

You know,

And be quite sharp.

But when you view the behavior in general,

They still come across as a very loving and caring person,

Right?

People are complex.

I think that's the picture.

I would,

I feel that we have such little information to go on.

It's a little bit tricky,

But that's one way of interpreting what he says about her.

It was interesting because doesn't he kind of make the claim that he uses her to almost practice his tolerance,

And he chose a wife that was particularly difficult to kind of reign in.

He compares it to training horses.

But the funny thing is,

I don't think it mentions this in the dialogue,

But that's what her name means.

Xanthippe means a yellow horse.

And he says,

Someone who's learning to train horses,

Again,

A bit like this thing about choosing a sparring partner,

Which is a strange analogy for a wife.

But he said someone who's learning to train horses would pick not easily domesticated horses,

But ones that are harder so that they can train and improve their skills.

If you imagine there's different,

You know,

You could grade horses on how difficult they are to train.

And if you want to really improve your skills as a horse trainer,

Then you start working with progressively more difficult ones until you're the go-to guy for dealing with even the most difficult.

And he says Xanthippe is challenging,

But I guess it's like this thing as well of being able to choose,

You know,

Is this something that you're confident that you can deal with,

Or is it something that you would just feel overwhelmed by?

And Socrates seems completely,

I mean,

Socrates probably is an exceptionally resilient individual.

So he seems completely unfazed.

And actually,

Funnily enough,

You could say,

If we say this is abuse,

Like tearing his shirt and throwing water over him,

She doesn't actually do him any physical harm,

Right?

And sometimes he seems to joke about that.

Like he said,

There's a joke where she threw water over him.

And he said,

I told you that Xanthippe's thunder would be followed by rain.

So he's like,

It's nothing to him.

This is a guy that survived the plague and three major battles in the Peloponnesian war.

Also,

We should remember,

He's seen people being slaughtered around him.

His wife throwing a bucket of water over his head is super trivial by Socrates' terms.

Yeah,

I'm fascinated by that relationship because there's so many questions and it's open to interpretation.